Did you know cooking at home has a ton of money benefits?
Aside from obviously saving money on your restaurant bill, there are other remarkable financial benefits of cooking at home we often fail to consider.
Many praise the countless health benefits of cooking at home. Others emphasize how eating home cooked meals can help bring a family together.
But in addition to all these valuable arguments, the financial factor plays a big part in favor of all home cooked meals.
3 remarkable financial benefits
of home cooking
Eating at home is cheaper than eating out
First and most indisputable money benefit of eating at home is the much lower financial implication.
A restaurant meal can set you back a anywhere from a couple hundreds to few tens of dollars.
So you might choose a cheaper restaurant or even a food joint to save money.
But even so, a meal + beverage is considerably more expensive than a meal cooked at home.
Without doubt, shopping for your own groceries to prepare your own meals is one of the best ways to save money!
Eating at home allows you to budget properly. This is especially helpful if you’re one of the many who live paycheck to paycheck.
This way, you can tweak your food budget according to how much you can afford to spend. Or, according to how much you would prefer to spend!
Our own grocery budget rarely exceeds $300. Some allocate more (especially those with a numerous family), others can actually get by with less!
Regardless of the size of the food budget though, it clearly doesn’t compare to eating out all the time!
On the plus side, you also get to save on tips!
No need to tip your mom, your wife or girlfriend for a delicious meal. Although you might have to return the favor by doing the dishes.
Related article: 10 money saving tips to grocery shop smart
Home cooked meals save time
…and we all know time is money.
In addition to the exorbitant sums of money adding up, eating out on a daily basis can be quite time consuming.
Imagine you’re on your lunch break and making a final decision regarding where to eat today takes forever. You suggest Mexican, but one colleague wants Chinese, while another is in the mood for just a burger.
Decisions, decisions… all this time you could have spent doing something more productive.
Imagine you’re on a date and have reservations for 8 o’clock. However, your table isn’t ready. Shocking! So you wait, but then realize the sooner you eat, the sooner you can start the more interesting part of your date!
Most are tempted (yes, even today) to fork out a $20 and discreetly hand it over to the guy in charge of the seating.
Of course, eating out isn’t all as bad as it sounds.
You can’t invite your crush over on your first date! It’s ridiculous!
You can’t say ‘no’ each time your friends invite you out or when your teammates from work would like to get to know you outside your cubicle!
You also can’t force your family to stay in and eat all the time, a change of scenery can be beneficial even for the most frugal family!
The main idea is though, eating out on a daily basis is actually more time consuming than it is convenient.
There are plenty of meals you can prep at home in under 30 minutes. You can also find a myriad of frozen meal recipes you can prepare in advance.
The time you gain is, in many cases, more valuable than you think.
For someone making $50 an hour, bribing the guy in charge of seating might actually be worth it!
But what if you’re paid $15 an hour at your job, and just gave the same guy a $20 bill. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Related article: 6 kitchen appliances that save time and money
Healthy meals save money
Without doubt, home cooking is healthier. But what does this have to do with money?
By eating most of your meals at home, you’re aware of what you eat. In the long run, this can save you money!
Doing your own grocery shopping helps you avoid ingredients that can cause your allergies to act up.
As an adult, you’re probably aware of any food allergies that might be dangerous. By doing your own shopping, you can purposely avoid buying them, since they clearly harm your health.
Eating out, however, increases the risk of consuming ingredients that you shouldn’t even be near you. It happens!
The result? Well, it depends. But surely no one looks forward to a trip to the hospital and getting stuck with a medical bill!
Grocery shopping on your own also lets you opt for the good quality foods, instead of cheap, tasteless products with no nutritional value.
Are you sure each restaurant and food joint pays serious attention to what ingredients they use?
Some places have exceptional reviews and 5 star ratings for a reason! But many others can’t compete with such standards for a reason..
Often times, meals prepared by large food chains or even small kitchens don’t offer the best quality ingredients on a plate, in exchange for your money.
When you cook at home, you know for sure your meals are safe to eat.
Sanitation Standards are a serious requirement for anyone running a business that involves serving food!
In order to cook hundreds of meals a day though, most places probably have a couple of tricks up their sleeves to speed things up and save money in the process
(One of them is probably picking up foods that have hit the floor… Have you seen how many times people do that right in front of Gordon Ramsey? No wonder the guy goes bananas!)
As a result, one might get food poisoning. Or fell less than fine after eating out.
This could, once again, end with a trip to the hospital and a medical bill you probably could have lived without.
Last but not least, you’re in full control of what goes into your meals and how large your portions are!
It’s easy to just go ahead and order a burger, then sit down and wait for someone to bring it to you.
But do you know what’s in it?
Are you sure those different burger toppings won’t make you gain weight?
What about the sauce, can you really enjoy your order without the burger sauce?
You pay for it anyway, might as well add it to the mix!
On the same principle, meals out are often times larger than life!
Since you paid for your order anyway, why would you stop eating before you feel full?
Who cares if Martians can see your plate from space!
All this can easily lead to gaining a lot of weight in a short time.
If you’re used to eating out often, beware of the consequences on your silhouette!
While for some this isn’t that much of a big deal, others can suffer serious health consequences. Which can lead – you guessed it! – to yet another reason to pay your doctor a visit.
Related article: 5 extremely cheapskate things I wouldn’t do to save money
Above all else though, home cooked meals really do bring families together!
What’s more intimate than a meal shared at home with your loved one?
Or having your kids help out with the easy tasks? (even if they make a mess!)
Family gatherings are also a great way to eat a healthy home cooked meal and catch up with relatives you rarely get to talk to.
But in addition, it’s nice to think eating at home helps your budget breathe a little.
Can you think of any other financial benefits of cooking at home?
Thanks for sharing! I think the time-saving benefits of cooking at home is amplified if you do some form of batch-cooking. Like on the weekends prepping your meals for the week ahead. Then you can spend a couple of hours or so, and not have to do any cooking afterwards. This is what I used to do for years and years. The only downside to this is usually that it gets boring. But for some reason, fortunately for me, I’m ok with it. As long as I can get some variety on the weekends. I typically can do this indefinitely (with brown rice, chicken, and vegetables). Although as of late, we’ve been “catering” from a local terriyaki place. It’s more expensive, but it saves even more time! XD So pretty much we buy already-cooked chicken and steamed veggies in bulk from them (full or half trays), and so we only have to cook the rice at home.
Agreed! Batch cooking helps a great deal.
I admit, I’ve only been doing it for a short while, although I did have my mom to ‘introduce me’ to the habit. She always used to cook for the upcoming week on weekends, since her job didn’t allow her to have a ton of free time.
Never thought about ordering main ingredients though. I’m so used to doing the weekly shopping, chopping and pre-cooking, it really doesn’t bother me to spend that extra time in the kitchen 😀
When I was younger and single, I was always intimidated by cooking. In my younger days, I could only make scrambled eggs and boil water for my ramen noodles! I thought it was pretty hard but honestly, it really isn’t. It saves so much money and is much healthier for you. Actually now that I shop for food and cook it, I have a hard time order foods that I can make for a fraction of the cost.
I feel the same way! We do eat out from time to time, but knowing I can eat at home for much, much less motivates me even more to cook our meals from scratch.
[…] cooking at home is a huge money saver, two distinctive facts are […]
[…] We are always looking to save and earn more money, going with the hard economic times that we are going through. There are many ways to cut costs such as cooking your food at home instead of eating at restaurants. In this article, we are going to take a look at the financial advantages of home cooking. […]
It made sense when you said that home cooked meals save time. My husband and I have been eating out way too much. Your article made me excited to find some traditional Russian recipes to cook at home!